Weylin

All of my yes. I don't know about the rest of you, but I hold the life of my kerbonauts in high regard, and have to date not left a single one stranded or killed. If I don't think they can survive a mission, and if my design hasn't been thoroughly tested, then they wont be flying on that mission. This is, of course, in preparation for there actually being a penalty for deaths.

I would personally suggest leaving the system we have now (And what is planned for it) as it is, but to have the option to reach out to other systems by a gate of some sort, because it's totally inconceivable to reach other solar systems by any other way in the frame of time this game can work within. The gate would just be a simple way to access new systems with new challenges, massively increasing the replayabilty of this game. It's NOT difficult to procedurally generate height maps and biomes and planet statistics. It's a bit of work initially but saves you a lot of work in the long run.

It seems a bit unnecessary to step out, grab a sample, stuff it in the capsule, transmit it, step back out, grab another, put another one in for the return home. I'm fairly sure that astronauts reported back with their findings of the surface material, and that it didn't in fact cause it to spontaneously vanish.

New item: Photopolarimeter This would be used to scan the planet you are within the SoI of in order to unlock a list of experiments you have yet to accomplish. If the observatory is implemented, this would unlock the experiments for high and low orbits in your checklist. Science could still be done with or without either of these, this would just allow you to see what points of interest exist without actually having to be there. Who would know (without using the wiki) that there was a distinction between the various flats and hills on minmus? New archive tab: Undone science/To Do/Checklist Using the Photopolarimeter will add to a checklist of biomes and experiments that have not yet been done, which leads to the next part. New functionality: Mission editor/Surface waypoints After acquiring a few entries on your checklist, you'll have the option to create a mission, or really, just a big fancy waypoint, which will allow you to create an arbitrary target to reach, such as a specific crater or mountain range on a planet. Once you've done a Photopolarimeter scan of a planet, you'll have access to a biome map, which could also show topographical information to help find a landing spot that's less likely to send you tumbling down a hill. The topographical layer could be something only unlocked once you've done a scan at low orbit, but high orbit should be adequate to at least light up points of interest.

That's good to know, I was getting quite frustrated not knowing how to do that. However, it still stands that some burns can take a very long time, even with acceleration, and being able to set a timer on it would at least allow you to go do something else for a while. Ion thrusters really seem more like something you'd use by sending a set of commands to a probe remotely, and would ideally allow you to go on other missions while it does its thing, but that currently isn't supported.

Instead of total randomization they could use a seed. Think of a stargate, and the code you enter will give access to a system based on that seed, so you can share the code and people will be able to relate or challenge others in some way. Starquest online did this. Starbound did this. Shores of Hazeron did this. All the planets were procedurally generated, and other players can explore the same exact places based on coordinates.

Ion engines are among the most frustrating things to use in this game, though this is a matter of opinion, I find it difficult to understand how someone could ever enjoy a feature which takes 20 minutes to finish a maneuver. Maybe I'm just using them wrong. Maybe Ion engines are only supposed to be used for high-precision interplanetary course tweaking, and if you have to do a lengthy burn you're using them incorrectly? In any case, I suggest that ion engines have a right click menu that allows you to set an ion engine to run at a given thrust (which you can already do) for a set period of time (which you can't do). Being able to time warp for the duration of the run time would be lovely too. In the meantime, what do you guys do while waiting for your ion drives to accomplish in 5 hours what a sneeze could do in half a second?

Keeping part counts to a minimum is a good thing because it improves frame rate, and makes it less likely for hiccups in the physics to ruin your day. Procedural/scalable parts would seem to be possible because that's more or less what the clamps are with their adjustable height.

Instead of having dozens of pre-defined parts, why not have certain redundant objects like fuel tanks and adapters use a single configurable object? So instead of several types of inline fuel tanks, it could work like so: Pick fuel tank. A dialog pops up. Choose diameter (small, medium, large, custom(?) ) Choose length or desired fuel capacity (either a list of presets, a slider, or allow numerical input) Then choose a skin for the part to get a desired look. Would this be clunky? Do you prefer to just choose something from the list? What if this was more of a final tier tech that accompanies your other parts, for use in such situations where you want a specific part type? This could conceivably help with part counts, and of course the stats of the object would all depend on your desired parameters. What do you guys think? Would you rather stick with working with the part limitations as a challenge, or do you like the idea of having tanks and other structural parts have tweakable dimensions?

I plan on using the science lab on an interplanetary mission around Jool... once I figure out how to get there, of course. I'll run goo and material studies, transmit the data, and clean the experiments. This will let me, with just 1 small lander (and maybe a few others for backup) take 2 trips to every biome, one for a transmit so if something goes wrong the whole mission wasn't a total loss, and the second trip for a physical return sample. The lab seems quite useful to me. It would be silly to use it around kerbin, but I can really see it being ideal to use around Jool with all its moons, and being able to boost transmissions on materials, seismics, and nosecones is pretty significant because they are so low as it is.